FIERCE, NOT FAITHFUL

CHAPTER 6-Crossroads

Chapter 6

Amara was lying out on the shabby couch in the loft of Nyanza, with the mild moonlight stealing in between the slatted blinds. The paint-set was spread upon her knees, and the colors like so many spilled dreams upon the old wooden floor. City Galore was vibrating out there with its every-night noise-trucks backing up, voices on far rooftops, horns that meant late hours and fresh starts. In her room she shook with an odd mingling of relief and desolation.

She had got over Julian, nevertheless her heart grew heavy with his absence. And in the depression that was left she found consolation in smears of cobalt and amber. Free of the burden to be good, she recalled why she liked to paint at all, to draw her soul, not her image.

But though she rubbed the bitterness off, curiosity ate at her. Was it Julian that was seeking her? Would he give up or defend? And what was that saying about her?

There was a tap at the door. Amara stood still--she was afraid in her bones. Nyanza was seen the next moment, soft and pacific. “It’s Caius.”

She had not time to reply when Caius entered, black shape in the lamplight, his breath warm and even. He shut the door behind him, and came directly over to her. His glance ran over the canvas, and then rested on her.

“You gave him up."

Amara gazed at the picture--an unfinished picture, a woman just entering upon the thorny path. “I did.”

He sat down by her very cautiously. This attic is your style. It doesn t cost you anything, just like your art ought to be.”

She nodded and swallowend. It is more difficult than I supposed.

He paused. “He will look.”.

“I know.”

Caius bent forward. “Then make it be so.”

She looked up at him. “What is it you want?"

He held her by the hand. “What you desire. I can adjust to anything you want my queen"

Their time was tightened like a wire ready to break. Amara held his hand, and she was not sure that she trusted him but he was honest, anyway.

Meanwhile, back at the villa in his large study, Julian went through her stuff: emails, sketches, her art class workbook. He was crushed by the turn of her pages. At last he knocked the door and marched off into the night. He would not pursuit her now he would mount, he would increase, till she gave or he gave.

Later the next morning, Amara woke up late in the loft with the sun flowing over her face. She looked at the picture: a woman half out of the picture. Over the cliff. She was going to finish it--but Carter, the young neighbor, looked in the window.

He mouthed the words, “Nice work,"and pointed to the painting.

She smiled, and it was the first smile in days, and whispered, “Thanks."

Carter draw back, and she was made buoyant by a little encouragement. This was her stakeing claim, her creating a home on her conditions.

The next evening Caius had turned up at the studio door quite unexpectedly with a temperature readout a heating pad for her sore fingers, fresh canvas, brushes. “You are working too hard," he said.

She took the pads and put them in her lap.

“Necessary, I must."

He examined the shabby couch, the disorderly pigments, the readiness of her laugher at her sketching. “You are becoming more and more like you."

She grinned gently. “Thanks.”

They laboured together without any serious conversation till Caius could speak again. “The dock men my men they hear of this loft.” His voice became gloomy. They are calling me back.

Terror flared in her breast. “Your world…”

He twisted his eyebrow. “Is mine. But this one belongs to you.”

They were sitting in that attic of street-lamps and hopes. The creak of paint, the dull rumble of traffic. Amara found herself thinking, with a shock, that this life was going to require strength which she did not even as yet know the name of.

When the morning was near she fell asleep among blank pages and unfinished canvases.

She got a text message a week later

: Art show this Friday. Open invitation.

When Caius came back in the afternoon he slipped a lacquered card under her door, no necessity to speak.

The policy of Julian became more aggressive. He was making telephone calls, calling in favors, rooting around in their joint investments. He put questions to friends very lightly, yet very emphatically, “Where is she? I must see her, before she is gone altogether.”

All the associations shook heryet the loft was more home than their villa had ever been. She was conscious that he was bound to discover her sometime; the point was of tactics, and Friday was all wild and huge as a thunderstorm.

That night Amara and Nyanza went into the gallery which was full. She was in a black dress, and her hair was loose. There was the smell of fresh paint and acrylic medium, of breath and ambition in the room. An easel held her own large canvas blues and ochres falling like cascades titled, Unfinished.

Caius and slipping in beside her, was proud in his eye. She heard snatches of admirers tapping into their phones. There was something uncooked in the crowd to which the painting was addressed: struggle, evolution, courage.

But with the applause growing louder the doors of the gallery opened and Julian entered. He was neat as a pin in a charcoal suit with his houndstooth passion tie unfastened. His look ruined the room: surprise and connubiality, possessiveness and admiration.

Amara was in a throng of strangers, and his eyes were flaming. He saw her, and lost her, as she wished, inside. He made a step towards her. Amara caught her breath, and stood her ground. She was standing there near Caius, with her shoulders uncovered in the powerful limelight.

“Beautiful,“ Julian said, in a far-off dazed voice.

Amara listened to the pounding of her heart, which was nice and even. “It was painted... I painted it."

Julian exhaled, “Then it belongs to you."

There was a crack that opened in her. And now, in that vibrating gallery of light and tumult, she perceived the scales to fall. This was her element in the coarseness of her making, in the roll of her own heart, in the contrariety between the man who made her cage and the man who broke it. And Caius found her hand, she squeezed in.

Julian choked, and stared back into the throng, a man who was not masked, and had not expected to see her thus transformed to a woman.

And as the clapping started up again, this time more strong, Amara allowed it to pass over her. She was standing independently, in a life that did not require his authorization anymore.